How to spoil your woman – four days in Turkey

I dragged Hannah up to the seventh floor on the pretence of checking out the view, which was reportedly pretty spectacular. There was possibly a brief moment of panic as we exited the lift, as she realised there was no actual viewing platform, but I grabbed her hand and led her through the door into the very swish looking restaurant. I must admit, the timing couldn’t have been better since her flight from London had landed only a couple of hours ago, and it was a gamble to even know if she would be hungry. So I was pretty chuffed when Hannah was the one who brought up dinner plans as a matter of priority, no doubt expecting me to lead her to the finest and cheapest pide or kebab shop that I had so far uncovered during my wanderings. But even more delightful was the look on her face when I stated to the Maître d’ that we had a reservation for two, under the name of ‘Bruce’. The table had been specifically picked out a day earlier, right on the edge of the outdoor terrace overlooking the Bosphorus river that separated Europe from Asia, and the timing couldn’t have been better with a sunset panoramic view over half the city of Istanbul. Now that, gentlemen, is how to impress a lady!

I suppose Hannah deserves a good write-up, because it’s about time she rated more than a passing mention in my blog. And just the other day she requested ‘relationship’ status on Facebook, so I guess I’m stuffed six ways to Sunday now. The Imbat restaurant that I’d booked is possibly the finest restaurant in all of Istanbul, serving up fantastic Ottoman cuisine with a dab of Aegean regional flair. It’s located on the top floor of the Orient Express Hotel (note: this is NOT the same place as that other budget slum, the Orient Hostel) and I didn’t know it at the time, but turns out it was right next door to the Ilkay Hotel, where Hannah and I finally managed to book a reasonably priced room that wasn’t either infested with bed bugs, a former brothel or a heaving hostel in the touristic rip-off of Sultanahmet. So it was all the more convenient to ‘check out’ the view as we began our evening walk around the city, and my surprising Hannah with a most romantic dinner went like clockwork.

The Imbat restaurant did not disappoint at all, in fact I was most impressed, and Hannah – well let’s just say that she went all gooey the moment we stepped through the door. It was my shout of course, since I’d decided that it was about time I splurged a little on my travels, and put to good use my Aussie credit card which had long since been paid off and seen little daylight for a few months. And I made it clear to Hannah that there was no holding back, so we went to town on the menu, ordering the likes of delicious cheese and spinach filled pastries, a delicious chicken salad, braised lamb steaks and some wonderful prawn-seafood concoction. The names of the various dishes escape me and I’m sure the above description doesn’t do them justice, but it was without doubt the best proper meal I ate in all of Turkey. This was topped up (of course) with several Efes beers, a bottle of the local red and two glasses of raki, followed by a magnificent shared dessert of Baklava with a sensational pistachio flavoured ice cream. I must say, raki is definitely not my thing I’ve decided. After knocking back some of the local moonshine at the hostel, and then tasting arguably what has to be one of the better varieties at Imbat this particular evening, both times I vehemently fought the urge to vomit. Sitting opposite however, ‘Hardcore Hannah’ seemed to be living up to her nickname and I would be fighting off her insistence of sharing a bottle of the poison for the next few days.

It was probably midnight before we left the restaurant, and how wonderfully convenient it was that on the other side of our hotel, was a groovy little venue called the Red River Pub. It was definitely western themed, but that was ok with me, since they sold 2.5L jugs of Efes, which we shared, before they kicked us out and we finally had to resort to the mini-market across the road where we loaded up with several more beers and some cashews and retired for the night. Not sure what time we passed out, but we very nearly missed brekkie the next morning! I’m glad we didn’t however, because our brekkie buffet was included in the price of the hotel, and I was fortunate enough to discover that hot potato chips go well with molasses (in the absence of gravy, which I’d probably still prefer given the choice).

With a full, gloriously sunny day to explore the sights, we headed up the hill to the main drag and wandered along the hill to the area near Sultanahmet where all the attractions are located. The first thing you notice is of course the Blue Mosque, highly impressive, but then I will say that there are so many awesome mosques in Istanbul, if you didn’t know any better you could swear that any number of them are beautiful enough to be the famous ‘Blue Mosque’. (Note: It isn’t actually blue…). Next door (or in front, whatever) is the Hippodrome, or what’s left of it, which seems to be something like a Cleopatra’s needle, poking up into the air and covered in Egyptian hieroglyphics. The park you stand in to view this is quite elongated, and of course it makes sense that once upon a time, it used to be a stadium for the likes of chariot racing and other games. Now, sadly there is not much left. We moved on to the Blue Mosque, shuffling through the park trying our best to ignore touts flogging us ‘English guidebooks to Istanbul’, a corn on the cob or a pile of mobile sim cards. Unfortunately, it was prayer time so we’d have to come back. When we did however, the inside of the Mosque is where it gets it’s name from. The mosaics and tiles inside are pretty awesome, and for visitors that aren’t dressed appropriately, they even give you clean sheets and things to cover up with. And it’s free, so definitely worth checking out the place. Muslims can’t get enough of it – they go to places like this at least four times a day apparently…

Leaving the Blue Mosque, you get a magnificent view of the old A Sophia, which also looks like a Mosque, but isn’t. Well, it possibly was once upon a time, then it was also a Christian church. These days it’s a museum. Go figure, this building has some phenomenal history, and is very impressive. The view from the rooftop terrace at the Orient Hostel was pretty good, one of the best things going for the hostel. You could see both of these awesome buildings lit up at night, quite spectacularly.

Next stop was the Grand Bazaar – something I was very much looking forward to seeing, and I did actually go for a quick wander around the Bazaar before Hannah arrived, thinking that if it was as big as everyone goes on about, then I might need more than a few hours to appreciate it. Unfortunately, the Grand Bazaar – as good as it was – didn’t live up to expectations. It was more like a semi-modern shopping mall, as opposed to the bustling, chaotic and exotic experience that I was hoping to find. Even the sprawl of the shops was not as confusing as I figured it might be. Much more fun was exploring the maze of local shops in the streets surrounding the Grand Bazaar, and also the much smaller but more authentic Egyptian Spice Bazaar, just a few blocks from our hotel. I won’t be too harsh however; I certainly experienced plenty of haggling and had to fight off numerous shopkeepers who, if you gave them so much as an accidental glance, would insist that you wanted – and needed – to buy their wares. There were beautifully decorated garments, bright and colourful lanterns, rack after rack of pashmere scarves and sarongs, and hundreds of carpets hanging from the walls. At the Egyptian Bazaar, shops sold herbs and spices from huge barrels and outside, fresh fruit and vegetables, fish and meat produce. Your mouth watered just dreaming of what concoctions people could muster up in the kitchen with such wonderful flavours and ingredients!

Surrounding the streets of the Egyptian Bazaar were even more shops – thousands of them – selling everything under the sun. Whatever you needed, you could get it here, from hardware to food, leather jackets to toys. And of course every now and again the densely packed shops were broken up by a couple of chai tea houses and cafes or take-aways selling cheap pide or Turkish kebabs. I took Hannah to one cafe that I’d had chai tea at the previous day before she arrived. The tea was cheap, and a pide and a slice of burek (not traditional however) set us back a mere 6 lire, or about 3€…

A bit later on and it was back to the spoiling. I took Hannah through the main drag of Sultanahmet, since she did want to see it even if we weren’t staying there ourselves. In a way, the place is quite pretty at night, but it still reminded me more of a fake Hollywood movie set. We rounded the corner near the Four Seasons Hotel, just below the Blue Mosque and I mentioned that, should she want to, I had also made a reservation at the restaurant on the corner, Aloran. It had been voted #1 restaurant in all of Istanbul on the Tripadvisor website, so it was up to her if she would like to go there for dinner, or if we should checkout some of the Turkish meze restaurants on the opposite side of town in the famous Beyoğlu district. She chose Beyoğlu, and so we grabbed a beer and trundled across the bridge into the vibrant new part of Istanbul.

We caught an underground funicular train up the hill (it was very steep!) and marched along what is arguably Istanbul’s answer to Oxford Street, full of high street shops, with cafe’s and restaurants springing up all over the place in the side streets. We enjoyed a fabulous meze dinner in a street that was jam packed full of locals, all watching the Friday night football on TV, something of a local pastime apparently. Once again, the food was pretty damn delicious. Normally I would not go for so many cold entree starters, but the various dips and salsas that came out with a plate full of bread dippers were all wonderful. The mixed grill for the main satisfied my carnivorous side! We left the restaurant pretty late and by the time we walked back to the funicular it was closed, but we still had a nice walk along the river, past numerous market stalls setup on the pavement and guys selling jars full of pickled vegetables or corn-on-the-cob – even at this late hour. One of the highlights had to be the ‘fortune telling rabbit’. We noticed several of these in the heart of the city, and stopped once to have a good look. A guy with a rabbit perched on top of a wooden stand would tempt people to pay a few lire for the privilege of the rabbit then using its paw to select one of the many colourful folded papers on a platform underneath which he was perched. Each one was like the message you would get inside a fortune cookie, and they even had fortunes written in either Turkish or English. It was hilarious to watch the rabbits randomly land on somebody’s fortune!

There were a few other interesting sights that we managed to squeeze in, one of which was the Basilica Cistern. Upon entering a small stone building, you proceed downstairs to find an enormous underground chamber. It was constructed centuries ago by one of the Sheiks as a water source for the city, fed by several aqueducts. The huge columns that support the ceiling go on seemingly forever into the darkness. The cistern is now virtually drained – only about 1ft of water remains, and you can see huge, fat carp or cod (or something) swimming around on the bottom. In places the columns have been illuminated and you get the impression of just how tall and big the underground cavern is.

The other impressive attraction was of course the old Fortress. It’s hard to miss, given the size of the grounds and the parkland within the huge stone walls. We actually managed to lose our way when looking for the entrance to the palace, made famous for being the home of many of the ruling Sheiks many centuries ago. Inside you find buildings and decorations that are much more ‘Persian’ or what you would expect to find moving further into the Middle East. Indeed, it’s actually worth pay the ‘second’ entry fee just to see the old Harem within the palace. This is where the ruling Sheik lived, along with all his wives, children and Eunuch servants. There’s actually some interesting history to this place, and some of the Sheiks were genuinely probably stark raving mad. Mind you, some of the people must have been pretty mad themselves to go anywhere near the place.

Did you know for example, that under Muslim law, you are allowed to have up to four (4) wives? This is of course pretty common knowledge, but these Sheiks, dead set, they had wives, plus hundreds of other girls (mistresses) to keep themselves entertained. The Harem – in any place, not just in this palace – was pretty much exclusively for the women. The Eunuchs who served the Sheik in the Harem were all castrated – like their testicles chopped off. This ensured that the Sheik was the only person who could ever have his way with the women in the Harem, and the Eunuchs couldn’t even get it off on their own after such a drastic measure! People would bring their daughters to the Harem, in hope of them leading generally a better life than what they may have had otherwise. If they were good looking enough, they might be accepted by the Sheik. Then one day, if the woman bore a child to the Sheik, they would be even more looked after. So you could kind of say that a Harem was pretty much a one-man brothel.

Of course, some of the Sheiks were nutters themselves. One in particular decided one day (on a whim) that he was sick of his company, and had every single person in the Harem drowned, so that he could start again. This was literally hundreds of people – all his servants and women and so forth. Stark raving mad!

Anyway, our time In Istanbul came to an end – rather quickly too, and both Hannah and I agreed that we could easily spend another few days in town. We spent the last afternoon sitting back on a very comfortable cushion lounge, smoking apple shisha, filling in silly postcards and drinking more beers than we should have drunk before jumping on a 10 hour bus trip to Cappadocia. It was a perfect way to see out the city and it’s hard to describe just how comfortable those cool little floor lounges can be! But alas, we had to move on. Getting to the bloody bus terminal was a nightmare, because there was some kind of drama in Istanbul that day. There was a whole bunch of protesters gathering outside the Blue Mosque in the park, I think they were rallying against the new constitution changes that had been voted in the weekend before. Not helping either was the traffic leading out of Istanbul – completely gridlocked. I’m not sure if or how these two things were related but I suspect that they were, and I’ve never seen traffic so bad anywhere before in my life. We literally should have walked the 14km to the bus terminal, it would have been quicker. Many people on our minibus missed their earlier coaches, and we arrived 15 minutes late, but thankfully the company we were with arranged for the coach to meet us not at the bus terminal, but somewhere on the highway where we could get to it in time. It was all very confusing since our minibus driver didn’t speak English, but we got both ourselves and Bessie on the bus without too much fuss in the end, and the bus was only about 1 hour delayed in the morning when we arrived at Cappadocia.

We were staying in the little town of Göreme, and looking out the window as you approach, downhill into the valley, you feel like you are about to land on the surface of the moon. There are amazing natural rock features everywhere you look. Officially these are called ‘fairy chimneys’ but in reality they are not chimneys. Despite looking like something out of a smurf village, they are actually formed from the natural erosion of the volcanic rock, which leaves these amazing spires. As Hannah put it, they pretty much look like enormous stone penises. Gotta love the girl.

Centuries ago, locals built their homes into these spires, carving rooms, doorways and windows into the rock. And due to some fabulous Internet research, Hannah had managed to get into the vibe of the place, and booked us into a ‘deluxe cave suite’ at a place called Flintstones Cave Hotel. It was only about 400m walk from the bus stop (most things in Göreme are) and we rocked up to Flintstones to be greeted by the wonderful manager. Even though it was only around 9am,we were immediately shown our wonderful room, which was built into the side of a cave and had its own Jacuzzi spa and everything. Unfortunately we were so time pressed in Cappadocia that we couldn’t even put it to good use. Hannah had literally 24 hours before her flight left back to London via Istanbul, and so with the hotel manager’s assistance, we put together an enormous one-day itinerary and were on the go pretty much non-stop.

We started out catching the local minibus out to an ‘underground city’. Very similar to the fairy chimneys, except that instead of being carved into a spire, this sprawling city complex was carved into the ground, going as deep as 4-7 stories underground, depending on which city you visited. Apparently the cities were build so that locals could escape during times when they faced possibly persecution, and they literally buried themselves underground in their cities until it was safe enough to come out again. The cities have thousands of little rooms, large kitchens and oven areas, storage for food, communal areas, dunnies and huge ventilation shafts which – when you drop a stone to the bottom, you can’t even hear it land. Importantly, they also had wineries… I guess you needed to be constantly inebriated to live for so long underground at a stretch!

After the amazing underground cities, we wandered around the local town of Kaymakli whilst we waited for a minibus back to Göreme. I found a local shop selling humongous kebabs on fresh bread rolls. I got two for 3 lire – about 1.50€. Full to the brim, I was very happy. And so we managed to find our way back to the hotel where our next move was to walk up to the Göreme Open Air Museum. Not bad, but to be honest, you can see some amazing sights around Cappadocia without paying to go and see a bunch of churches carved into a hillside – annoyingly with about 2000 other tourists and their pushy guides who pretty much do everything in their power to make sure their groups get priority over anyone stingy enough not to have paid for a ‘guided tour’. Still it was enjoyable, but I reckon we saw some much better sites when we went back to town to hire a bike for Hannah. I jumped on Bessie, and then we all went out of town about 6km towards a place called Zelve, where there was an amazing valley full of penis monuments. The scenery reminded me of when I was in Arizona, though of course the Americans couldn’t get it up like the Turks can! We had a marvellous time exploring some of the ‘free’ sights, and honestly I reckon they were much better anyway, and certainly less crowded. On the way back to town we made a detour to swing past a place called Love Valley. There was a pretty nice panoramic viewpoint, though the hill climb took it’s toll on both of us (especially Hannah I’m guessing, but good marathon training, right?).

With evening approaching, what better way to scrub away the dust and grime of the day by hitting up a Hamam – a traditional Turkish bathhouse? Yes, very exciting. We were dropped off to a five-star hotel in the Flintstones minibus, and went down into the Hamam where I got to strip down and wear one of the traditional bath robe thingys. It’s quite a weird but cool sensation having some strange Turkish chick pretty much rubbing and scrubbing every part of your body (nearly, no happy endings… you need to go to Thailand or Singapore for that…). The sheer amount of water and suds that I seemed to be washed down with was incredible, as you lie on a marble stone slab. Before all this, they stick you in a sauna or steam room to open your pores and sweat all the crap out of you, and then when they’ve finished the bath and given you a good massage, you go lie down with a glass of water and then jump into a freezing cold pool. I must say the massage was surprisingly good – I’ve had remedial massage for sport before which wasn’t this good. The girl had strong arms and didn’t muck around when she found numerous knots in my back, then gave it a good crack and set me right. That’s what months of endless cycling and camping on hard ground will do to you!

Feeling very refreshed, we hit up another restaurant with a rooftop terrace overlooking the entire town of Göreme. At night, the fairy chimneys are all lit up quite spectacularly, and we went to town once again with the drinks and the food. I had a local specialty called an ‘Et Testi’. No it is not the testicle of some goat or Eunuch. It is a meat kebab cooked in a clay pot, which they crack open with a hammer on your table. It was bloody delicious, despite me getting plenty of the juice all over a brand new white shirt! (Grrr, yes Curby, I should have heeded your advice – ‘white’ does not exist anymore when you are a traveller’…). I successfully polished off an entire bottle of red, and a couple of Efes, before the constant activity and excitement of the day started taking its toll. An hour later we were sprawled on comfortable cushion lounges in a cool little shisha cafe, smoking some peach flavoured water pipe and drinking more beer. I suddenly found myself so knackered that I was almost in a zombie state. My eyes were burning and I reckon you couldn’t have kept them open in a room full of naked, blonde Scandinavians. It was high time to go to bed, but there was one more massive item on the agenda before the whirlwind “Tour-de-Hannah” was over…

The alarm went off at about 5am, quickly followed by the snooze button, but sleep was now a lost cause. We had to get up, crawling out of the monstrous bed which I really don’t even remember getting into. As enticing as it was to just drift back to sleep for another 5 hours, we were being picked up by yet another minibus in less than twenty minutes, and let’s be honest – a dawn hot air balloon flight over Cappadocia is definitely worth getting up early for!

There is no spectacle like it in the world apparently – so many hot air balloons, going up every morning with hundreds if not thousands of tourists. The first balloon flight over the region occurred a couple of decades ago and ever since, it has grown to become an almost ‘must-do’ if you visit Cappadocia. I would certainly agree that it should not be missed, despite the price, but hey, that’s what VISA cards are for, right? Anyhow, Hannah insisted on shouting me my flight as a 30th birthday present (we were going to go shooting AK-47’s in Prague, but it fell through. This was certainly a better alternative anyway!). Seeing so many balloons – there must have been over a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty on the morning we had our flight – was such an amazing spectacle, and made for some excellent photos. Even if you were too poor to afford a balloon flight, it would be worth getting up at sparrows’ fart just to see all the balloons taking off from the take-off fields just up the road from the centre of town. Today, we were one of the lucky ones, and our totally unreal balloon flight lasted just over an hour. We pretty much drifted wherever the wind took us, changing altitudes to catch different wind currents in different directions if desired. The sun rises over the hills of Cappadocia whilst you are gaining altitude, and the balloons go up to about 1,000 metres if the conditions permit!

It was an amazingly romantic morning, the only thing I regret doing was not having a shave for the photos! But hey, when the bloody hell did I have time to shave in the past couple of days? The flight ended when the pilot expertly landed us on the back of a ute. Then, the 20-odd people that shared our basket toasted the flight with a glass of champagne in some farm field (nothing like shampoo for brekkie!) By 8am, we were back at Flintstones having brekkie, and five minutes later, Hannah was gone. Her airport pickup needed to drive her about 95km up the road to Kayseri for her 10:30am flight home. And just like that, the most romantic four days of my life were over. Probably Hannah’s too I reckon.

I didn’t hang around; you need to take your mind off things when you say goodbyes like this. At least it was a quick one, no time for many tears and shit like that. I did the best thing I could think of to occupy my mind, and set a cracking pace on the bike towards Antakya – 400km to the south. I wasn’t sure if I would have to cycle the whole way – I certainly hoped not – but the buses out of Göreme weren’t exactly promising the world when it came to transporting bicycles. Once again, it was the story of some useless 12 year old kid who was left in charge of the travel agency whilst his Dad went off to smoke a pipe or shag one of his four wives or something. So I hit the road, not knowing where I’d end up, but planning to cycle all day if I had to. And I couldn’t help but be in a pretty good mood as I climbed back up the hill to the top of the valley, scored an awesome panoramic view over Göreme, cycled past the rock formations that we’d seen on the way in, and finally once more past the underground city before heading into the unknown south of Turkey.

Yep, it had been a pretty amazing few days. I’m sure Hannah, you would agree, it’s gonna be a hard act to follow! But I have no doubt we will manage it!

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